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THE PIANOFORTE AND ITS INFLUENCE

ON MODERN MUSIC
By EDWARD J. DENT
O maledetto, o abbominoso ordigno,
Che fabbricato nel tartareo fondo
Fosti per man di Belzebuimaligno
Che ruinar per te disegno il Mondo,
All' Inferno, onde uscisti, ti rassigno.
ARIOSTO, Orlando Furioso, IX., xci.

I.

T is generally agreed that the English are an unmusical race,

but they have at any rate enjoyed a considerablereputation

as inventors of labour-saving appliances. It is therefore not

surprising that a tradition which seems to be fairly generally
accepted by musical historians ascribes to England the invention
of the earliest musical instrument in which a row of strings was
caused to sound by mechanism actuated from a keyboard. The
exact date of this invention cannot be fixed, nor is it certain
whether the strings were plucked, as in the harpsichord, or struck
with tangents as in the clavichord; but it is generally ascribed
to the beginning of the thirteenth century, if not earlier. It was
probably in England also that a special system of tablaturenotation for the organ was invented, of which a specimen has
come down to us belonging to the first half of the fourteenth
century, a hundred years before the first known specimens of
organ music on the continent. A third point of interest is that
among the instruments belonging to Henry VIII was "a virginall
that goethe with a whele without playing uppon"-presumably the
earliest known ancestor of the pianola.
These three landmarks in the early history of the pianoforte
are characteristic, because they show at once the essentially
mechanical nature of the instrument. Our ordinary staff notation
is in its origin vocal, being derived by uninterrupted steps from
the Greek accents. Sol-fa systems, whether we take Guido's or
Miss Glover's, are merely mnemonic devices to assist the singer in
271

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imagining the sounds he has to sing. But tablatures of all kindsprimitive organ tablatures, lute tablatures, recorder tablatures,
the modern mandoline tablatures to be found in the back streets
of Naples, or the new system of pianoforte notation invented by
Ferruccio Busoni-imply a totally different principle in the minds
of those who use them. A singer, a violinist, a trombone or horn
player, playing from the staff, is obliged to imagine a definite
sound before he can make it; a player from tablature might be
utterly incapable of distinguishing one musical sound from another,
much less of imagining a definite musical sound in his brain, and
yet execute a piece of music correctly by following accurately the
directions given for the motions of his fingers. The keyboard once
invented and developed to a certain stage of easy manipulation,
there was nothing surprising in the invention of Henry VIII's
automatic player. From virginal to pianola is a much smaller
step than from voice to virginal.
The keyboard was a labour-saving device. In the early days
of the organ it enabled one man to admit air to several pipes
simultaneously by the movement of a single key: later, as the
keyboard attained the modern form, a single player could control
at once as many as four or even more of these different sets of
pipes-at any rate as long as he had some one else to provide the
instrument with wind. Additional labour for the supply of wind
was inevitable. If nature had provided man with four sets of
vocal cords so that he might sing four part harmony by himself,
he would have required in addition a corresponding increase of
lung capacity and muscular strength. One man at the organ
might control what would have been the work of four singers,
but he could not create it.
The adaptation of strings to the keyboard brought about an
entirely different situation. The technique of the organ assumed
as a matter of course that its sounds were sustained as consistently
as they would have been by voices. The organist could not vary
the loudness of a note while he held it; but as long as he held it,
his collaborators at the bellows could ensure its continuity of
sound. The harpsichord' on the other hand made no attempt at
continuity of sound. The string once plucked, the sound died
rapidly away, just as it did in the case of the lute or harp. But
musically, the harpsichord was no more an improvement on the
lute and harp than the organ was on a choir of voices. The lute
had a peculiar delicacy of tone-colour: the harpsichord could
'As a matter of convenience I venture to use the word harpsichord as signifying
all varieties of keyboard instruments with plucked strings.

The Pianoforte and Its Influence on Modern Music 273

imitate this in a rough way, but it could not by the nature of
its mechanism obtain any direct variety either of tone-colour or
of loudness. Those whohave not studiedthe harpsichordmay have
a difficulty in realizing this important difference between the
harpsichordand the "cembalocol piano e forte" which has now
taken its place. The loudness of the sound made by a plucked
string depends on the amplitude of its vibrations. To make the
sound louder, you must pluck the string more violently, that is
to say, you must pull it further out of the straight before you let
it go. Now in the harpsichordyou may thump the keys as violently
as you please, but you will make the sound no louder. The string
has a certain fixed limit of elasticity, and the quill which plucks
it has also its fixed limit of resisting power. At the moment
when the string's resistance overcomes that of the quill, the
string will be set in vibration. These two limits are not in any
way alterable by the rate at which the finger depresses the key.
What then were the advantages of the harpsichord? They
were these: the keyboard enabled a musician to indicate at any
rate, if not to sustain, a much larger number of notes than the
lute, and the comparativelyslight resistancewhich the mechanism
offered to the fingers permitted him to execute much more complicated and rapid successions of notes than was possible on the
organ. It will at once be seen that these advantages were purely
mechanical; they had no artistic value, and indeed involved of
necessity the sacrifice of almost all the most essential elements
of musical performance. It is probably for this reason that the
literature of the harpsichord even in the days when the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book was compiled (early seventeenth century)
is very small as compared with that which has come down to us
for voices or even for the lute and organ. It is the lute rather
than the virginal which occupies in the sixteenth century the
place of the pianoforte in the nineteenth, and the most elaborate
virtuoso-music for the lute belongs to the seventeenth century,
although towards the time of Handel its popularity was certainly
on the wane.
The harpsichordhad one noteworthycharacteristicin common
with all stringed instruments which are plucked, and which all
these instrumentshave in commonwith a groupgenerallyregarded
as quite apart from them. All plucked strings are instruments of
percussion, in that their sound is produced by an initial impact
after which it dies away more or less rapidly. Now this initial
impact is in all cases extremely violent in proportionto the sound
which is still audible after the first shock. In the case of bells

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or drums this fact needs no demonstration: in the case of the

harpsichord it is less obvious, but still perceptible to a careful
listener. As to the pianoforte, we have become so accustomed to
regard its tone as the normal quality of musical sound that many
people no doubt will say that the initial impact is only violent
under the hands of a bad player. This is a point to which I
shall return later on.
The psychological effect of the initial impact is a very important factor in the appreciation of music, and it is worth studying
from a historical point of view. The disproportionate violence of
the sound produced by instruments of this kind causes them to
have a peculiarly penetrating effect. Bells are used for all sorts
of non-musical purposes, ecclesiastical and secular, because they
can be heard at a great distance and can be perceived clearly
in the middle of subsidiary noises. This is proportionately true
of various other percussion instruments. The roll of a drum, the
thrum of a guitar, even the soft thud of a harp are often audible
as noises when their distance is too great for them to be recognizable
as musical notes. We do not regard the harp as a noisy instrument
in the orchestra; but its penetrating power was once made very
clear to me in a curious way. Sitting in a room of a house in
a quiet London square, the windows shuttered and curtains
drawn, I noticed a muffled and indefinable sound recurring at
regular intervals. "That is our street band," said the owner of
the house. Unbelieving, I opened the front door and looked out;
on the further side of the square a violin, cornet and harp were
performing. The melody of the cornet and violin at once arrested
my attention, and I thought that I hardly heard the harp at all;
then, as I listened more carefully, I recognized the rhythmical thud
in the bass note at the beginning of each bar. In the street it
was merely a soft accompaniment to the violin and cornet; in the
house it was the only part of the music that I could hear at all.
The importance of the lute as an influence towards the change
which took place in music towards the end of the sixteenth century
has long been recognized by historians. But it has not been fully
recognized that the change which made itself felt in harmony and
tonality was primarily a change of rhythm.
Pure vocal music may obtain its rhythmical effects in two
ways, by quantity-some notes being long and others short-or
by stress-some notes being loud and others soft.
Modern English depends so largely on stress for its rhythms
that many people have a difficulty in realizing quantitative values
But quantitative values, however negligible in verse,
at all.

The Pianoforte and Its Influence on Modern Music 275

cannot be disregardedin singing. This is one of the reasons why
singers prefer Italian to English; the Italian language being free
from such words as never,women,sinister, tabernacle,in which the
first syllable must be strongly emphasized, but on no account
prolonged. Indeed the more strongly the accented syllable in
such words is stressed, the shorter must its actual duration be.
Words like these are the despair of translators for music. The
natural tendency of vocal music is towards obtaining rhythm by
quantity. Stress in singing is a matter of positive difficulty,unless
the singeris helped out by the use of wordswhich he is accustomed
to stress in speaking. Words of this kind act, we may say, as
plectra to the vocal cords, and give the voice for the moment
something of the value of a percussion instrument.
The vocal music of the madrigalperiod was written without
bars, and in the hands of composers of the first rank attained
effects of great rhythmical subtlety by the use of an almost
exclusively quantitative method. Every one who has sung madrigals knows that the bar lines of moderneditions must be systematically disregarded. The madrigal composershad, however, one
other rhythmical device of great importance, the suspension or
prepareddiscord. When one voice has, as it were, to push past
another in a narrow place, an effect of resistance to be overcome
is produced,which results in a sort of stress. Hence the systematic
employment of suspensionsin the music of the Palestrina period
to mark cadences.'
Just as modernmusicof all kinds is arrangedfor the pianoforte,
so in the sixteenth century all kinds of music were arrangedfor
the lute and the virginal. Modern teachers of composition have
said that to arrange an orchestral piece for the pianoforte is a
safe test of its musical value. It would be interesting to know
what the teachersof the sixteenth century thought about arranging
madrigals for the lute. The suggestion implied is that all the
essentials of the musical thought are present in the pianoforte
arrangement. Yet any one who reads the lute and harpsichord
arrangementsof madrigals will surely agree that it is often very
hard to get from them a clear idea of the essential thought of
the original composer. For not only is much of the contrapuntal
writing necessarily lost, owing to technical considerations, but
quantitative values are obscured, and the rhythmical effect of
suspensions wholly lost, because the suspended note has almost
ceased to be audible at the moment when the percussion of the
accompanying dissonance would logically demand its maximum
'See Edward J. Dent, Italian Chamber Cantatas, The Musical Antiquary, II, 142.

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intensity. A complete rearrangement of rhythmical values is

almost bound to be apparent. Yet it is not surprising that these
arrangements were accepted, for we accept pianoforte arrangements with probably even greater willingness. An arrangement,
whether for lute or pianoforte, is in fact a stimulus to memory
and imagination. It might produce little impression on a listener
who had never heard the original work before, but to any one
who had even a slight recollection of it in its original shape, the
proper effects would be supplied mentally and even subconsciously
with an amount of ease dependent on the listener's musical
experience. Moreover, we must remember that a listener of those
days, even if only averagely musical, would have the madrigal
style as a permanent general mental background, whereas for us
a certain effort of the historical sense is always necessary even
when we hear a madrigal sung with a due sense of style.
We may pursue this use of the harpsichord as a stimulus to
imagination right down to modern times. As instrumental music
developed, so we may trace its advances in the faint reflections
given by the harpsichord either in actual arrangements or in
independent compositions. Any instrument which has a sharply
characterized style is easily reproduceable. As early as the days
of Byrd we find trumpet effects written for the virginal, and we
may note the gradual change in trumpet style through the trumpet
effects in the harpsichord music of Purcell,Alessandro and Domenico
Scarlatti down to Schubert, Mendelssohn and Chopin or later.
It is absurd to suppose that a single sound on harpsichord or
pianoforte could ever be mistaken for the sound of a trumpet;
but play a familiar and characteristic trumpet phrase, and any one
can respond to the stimulus of association.
Harpsichord and pianoforte music is in fact a mirror reproducing whatever is most characteristic of the general state of
music for any given age. In the early eighteenth century, the
most widespread type of music was the music of the Italian
operas: consequently we find that Italian opera is the key to the
understanding of the sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti, of Galuppi,
Platti and C. P. E. Bach. The modern pianist to whom this
period is represented only by a few of Scarlatti's most capricious
and difficult pieces will hardly bring himself to believe this statement. Scarlatti is in fact one of the most original composers
who ever lived, and one of the most diabolically ingenious in
writing for peculiar effects of his instrument; but if we study him
on a large scale and approach him by way of the others, after
obtaining a first-hand acquaintance with representative Italian

The Pianoforte and Its Influence on Modern Music 277

arias, there can be no doubt about his indebtedness to the composers for the stage and their singers.
Let us return for a moment to that other characteristic of
the harpsichordto which attention was drawn earlier, its rhythmical or rather accentual value as an instrument of percussion.
Its effect on vocal music becomes very apparent with the rise of
the monodic style. Except for the work of Lulli and the other
writersof music to French words, all recitative without exception,
Italian or English, was written in common time, and based on
the assumption that there was a strong accent at the beginning
of every bar. It was in this new style of vocal music that barlines became indispensable. The tendency of song is generally
towards rhythm by quantity: the tendency of speech is generally
towards rhythm by stress. When therefore musicians began to
aim at a more definitely rhetoricalstyle of setting words to music,
whenthey were doing their best to make song conformto the habits
of speech,it was inevitablethat their music should be basedmainly
on a system of stress-values,the positions of which were indicated
by bar-lines for the eye, and for the ear by chords struck on the
accompanyinginstrument. It was no doubt largely owing to the
desirefor a sharp contrast with the four-beatrhythm of recitative
that the Italian and English composers very soon developed a
markedtendency to composetheir arias in a rhythm of three beats.
The gradual standardizationof the orchestraduring the later
seventeenth century and its not very remarkable attempts at
compositionfor harpsichordalone might easily lead us to underrate
the value of the harpsichordat this period. But wherever there
is a figured bass there is the harpsichord, and the harpsichord
formedthe backgroundof all attempts towardsorchestralgrouping.
Practical experimentshows that the main value of the harpsichord
in an orchestra (apart from definitely solo passages such as occur
in J. S. Bach) is to give a rhythmical impetus, and this is corroborated in cases where a figured bass part for the harpsichord
exists of a much simpler nature than that for the basses of the
bowed instruments. It is on this strong sense of regular accent
that the whole of Bach and Handel, vocal as well as instrumental,
is built. No longer does a discordcreate an accent: accent justifies
a discord, as being the stronger musical force of the two, and all
that the discord can do is to help to exaggeratethe accent.
II.
From Italian operaboth the form and the style of the classical
sonata are derived. The idea of thematic development,as practised

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by Beethoven, was possible only after the Italians in their desire

for dramatic expression had broken up their melodies into short,
passionate phrases capable of presentation at different emotional
angles, of reiteration and of harmonic emphasis. It was just at
this moment that the harpsichord began gradually to give place
to the recently invented pianoforte. The pianoforte was the ideal
instrument for the reproduction of such rhetorical effects as these.
Moreover, Italian opera itself was at a very rhetorical stage. Its
principal vice was not, as is too often suggested, the undue elaboration of coloratura, but poverty of melody, combined with
over-emphatic declamation, in which the natural rhythm of the
vocal phrase was distorted by violent syncopations. It was the
same weakness that we find in the writing of Weber, though in
Weber the fault is aggravated by other complications due largely
to the direct influence of the pianoforte. Given such conditions,
it was only natural that C. P. E. Bach's pianoforte works should
be above all things rhetorical in manner. Their object was to
transfer to the domestic keyboard the magnificent gesture of the
Italian stage, and so far from disparaging their value we can
only admire the skill with which the composer placed effects of
such emotional brilliance within the reach of the amateur pianist.
What C. P. E. Bach did on a small scale, Mozart carried out
with greater detail and a far wider range of genuine poetic emotion.
It need hardly be pointed out that Mozart must be judged not
by his pianoforte sonatas but by his concertos. The pianoforte
concerto, which reached its perfection in his hands, shows even
in the eighteenth century something of that intense striving for
personality of expression which is one of the characteristics of
the romantic movement. However passionate the utterance of the
orchestra, it is the business of the solo pianoforte to show itself
master of an even more poignant vehemence. The mere sight of
the master seated at the keyboard gave a certain illusion of the
very act of creation-an illusion of which the fullest advantage
was taken in later years by Liszt. The introductory ritornello,
so perfunctory in its original place as the prelude to a vocal solo,
here could produce, especially when planned by the careful
ingenuity of a Mozart, an effect of genuine poetic value, so that
when the pianoforte entered and elaborated its themes, the
singing voice of the orchestra was still present in imagination
to the audience while they listened to the solo, though the actual
sounds produced by the pianoforte were in themselves only a
rattling of dry bones. It was the imagination of the audience
that clothed them with flesh, while the player at the keyboard

The Pianoforte and Its Influence on Modern Music 279

by his command of purely rhetorical effect, could enhance their
emotional value to an immeasurableextent.
The pianoforte was indeed the typical instrument of the
romantic movement. Changes in music are not due merely to
the haphazardinvention of new instruments such as the doubleaction harp or the valve-horn. The instruments are invented
because composers want them in order to express certain ideas.
When the new instruments are in being they may, however,
exercise a considerable influence in certain directions, because
the devices for which they were invented become over-emphasized
and stereotyped. The pianoforte of Beethoven's day was not
remarkablefor beauty of tone, as compared with modern instruments. But it suited the romantic composers, because it was
essentially an instrument for the awakeningof associations. Now
one of the chief characteristicsof romanticmusic is its dependence
on association. Not only did it love to reproduceas best it could
sounds really external to music altogether, but it made constant
use, especially in its later phase, of genuinely musical effects of
a kind which even the unlearnedcould recognizeas having definite
association with concrete ideas. Military effects, ecclesiastical
effects, horns and all the poetic visions of the German forest,
chromatic winds, waves in arpeggios, shepherds'pipes, minstrels'
harps, and all the rest of the theatrico-musicalWardourStreet of
the early nineteenth-century-the pianoforte was the one instrument which could imitate them all. And while it could always
imitate them well enough to ensure their recognition, its obvious
inability to imitate them exactly could be regarded as providing
that touch of unreality which distinguishes the true art of a
so-called "camera-study" from the crude realism of a mere
photograph.
Beethoven himself, it need hardly be said, was concerned
with deeper things than these. But he was none the less keenly
aware of the usefulness of the pianoforte in suggesting effects
belonging to other instruments, although the effects which he
employs are always strictly musical. His sonatas are full of
passages which depend for their right understanding on the
listener's recollection of the orchestra, sometimes even of a
singer. To name only a few of such cases, there is the tremolo
of low strings at the opening of the "Waldstein," the obvious
oboe phrases and repeated horn octaves in the slow movement of
the early sonata in D major, the vocal recitatives of the D minor
and other sonatas, the horn theme of "Les Adieux." Paradoxical
as it may appear, it is to Beethoven's deafness that we owe his

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extraordinarydevelopment of the possibilities of the pianoforte.

Totally indifferentas he must necessarilyhave been to the actual
quality of the sounds produced by the instrument, as compared
with the same sounds produced by other instruments, he viewed
the pianoforte in its true light, as a mechanical means by which
one playercouldindicatein a convenientand sufficientlyintelligible
way the huge rangeof sounds offeredby the orchestra. He treated
the instrument in his latest period much as he did the string
quartet, not with a view of producing works like the quartets of
Mozart in which every note is exactly in its right place, and no
additional note could ever be added, but as a means of sketching
the suggestive outlines of ideas which were too vast for any known
means of execution ever to realize completely. To this we owe
at any rate his employmentof the keyboardto its widest compass,
his marvellous variety in the ways of grouping notes under the
hands, and perhaps also his original methods of using the pedals.
It is in this last device that Beethoven foreshadowsmost definitely
the modern treatment of the instrument.
To us at the present day Beethoven is so essentially the
Beethoven of the third period that we can hardly realize how
rare were the musicians who grasped that period's significance
during the half-century which followedhis death. The only composer who seems fully to have understood him was Berlioz, and
Berlioz, though he realized the true function of the pianoforte
with regard to the orchestra, classing it always with the instruments of percussion, did not compose pianoforte music. Liszt
may perhapshave approachedhim, but Liszt's musicalpersonality
is so complex a matter that we cannot regardhim as being in the
direct line of descent from Beethoven.
There was, however, a fairly clearly-defined"classical"school
of pianoforte-playingduring the nineteenth century, the members
of which based themselves on Mozart and Beethoven, adding as
time went on the influencesof Bach and Brahms. It was a school
very reverent of authority, very unwilling to try experiments,
very suspiciousof any sort of music which did not conformstrictly
to a rather narrowtradition. Yet it included certain interpreters
whose lofty idealism, cramped as it was, could not be without a
lasting influence, and though some of its main principles were
fundamentally unsound, the emphasis which it laid upon the
purely intellectual side of interpretation may still give us reason
to rememberit with gratitude, now that the leaders who had the
power to give it vitality in the world of music are long since
dead.

The Pianoforte and Its Influence on Modern Music 281

The pianists of this "classical" school were in a certain sense
romantic on fundamental principle. They systematically accepted
the doctrine that the sounds of the pianoforte were equivalent in
value to the sounds of sustaining instruments. Improvements in
mechanism continually gave them additional cause to maintain
this doctrine, and a "singing tone," although a physical impossibility, was the object of their constant study. Human nature
never finds much difficulty in believing what reason proves to be
impossible, and we need not be surprised at the strange results
to which this curious habit of thought conduced. It is responsible
at a quite early stage for those peculiarly uncomfortable moments
in the violin sonatas of Mozart and Beethoven at which the
pianoforte delivers the principal melody, supported by single bass
notes in the left hand, while the violin fills up the middle with
a commonplace figure of accompaniment, in which the most
devotedly analytical mind could never pretend to find a thematic
value. When the violin plays pizzicato, there is no reason to
complain of the arrangement; but it seems to have taken composers
some little time to discover this device.
It is possible to find occasional places in Beethoven, and
even in Mozart, where the characteristic sound of the pianoforte
is employed as a rhythmical noise rather than a musical note or
combination of notes. In Mozart's Rondo alla turca the heavy
chords of A major in the left hand near the end obviously represent
the big drum, cymbals and triangle, which in German are always
called tiirkische Musik; this is not apparent on the pianoforte,
but is unmistakable when the movement is played on the harpsichord. Such examples as we may find in Beethoven are generally
of the freakish type which Sir George Grove used to associate
with the epithet "unbuttoned." Those of the romantics who kept
themselves respectable did not perpetuate them; every note struck
on the pianoforte was to have its definite musical value as part
of a homogeneous harmonic system.
The pianoforte writing of Schumann illustrates this well.
Schumann, who thirty or forty years ago was regarded as the
greatest of the romantics, is now the least esteemed of a school
with which the younger generation seems to feel utterly out of
touch. His musical material is commonplace, they say, even
vulgar at times: at his best he borrows from Weber and early
Beethoven, at his worst he relapses into the slush of German
Studentenlieder: his orchestral writing is impossible, his songs
unendurably sentimental, his treatment of the pianoforte clumsy
and monotonous in the extreme. Why then does middle age look

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back to Schumann not only as the most lovable of all composers,

but as one of the most daring and original, both in musical invention and in the technical handling of the pianoforte above all
other instruments? It is a problem which we must try to solve
scientifically, without appeals to sentiment, without horror at the
iconoclastic tendency of youth.
Schumann is in fact the most complete expression of a certain
phase of romanticism. His period had already classified certain
ideas as romantic, it knew it was romantic itself, it thought it
would be romantic to express those ideas in music. Hence Schumann is one of the most allusive of all romantic composers. His
entire personality depends musically on association, and just
because he is a pure musician who experiences everything through
the medium of music, his allusions and associations are always
musical and not realistic. Thus when he wishes to recall some
external idea, maternity, young manhood, the German forest, the
German Rhine, the idea expresses itself to his mind through the
medium of an associated musical sound-a cradle song, a student's
song, a fanfare of horns, a vintage song or cathedral music. And
so intimately is the idea bound up with the associated melody
that he forgets to apply to the melody the ordinary canons of
musical criticism. However humble and trivial the song, judged
simply as a piece of music, it is immeasurably ennobled in his
mind because it symbolizes for him an essentially noble idea.
He confuses in fact association (which may be of the most haphazard kind) with direct expression. This is essentially romantic.
And this is one reason why Schumann is dead to the younger
generation; the ideas are still noble, and will always be so, but the
musical themes by which he knew them have lost their significance.
It was only natural then that Schumann should be attracted
to the pianoforte above all other instruments. It was, as I have
said, the instrument best suited for music dependent on association,
and it was the instrument best suited for the expression of that
exaggerated rhythmical energy of a very primitive type which is one
of Schumann's most striking characteristics. It was his energy
and enthusiasm that endeared him to us a generation ago; the
humble simplicity of his themes only needed earnestness and
conviction of performance to make them sound splendid and
inspiring. One of the chief prophets of Schumann in those days
used to say contemptuously of Mendelssohn, "the faster you play
him the better he sounds"; the younger generation add thereto
"and I suppose the more effect you want to get out of Schumann,
the louder you must play him."

The Pianoforte and Its Influence on Modern Music 283

There is no doubt that the school of pianists who devoted
themselves to Beethoven, Schumann and Brahms exercised a very
valuable influence among amateurs in developing a manly and
intellectual sense of interpretation-an influence perhaps underrated by a generation which is fortunately too young to recollect
the epoch of Henri Herz and Brinley Richards. But this influence
was valuable only in one direction. It was an influence that in
other directions was positively deleterious, in that it encouraged
the amateur to take technique for granted, to dash at a composition
and give a rough impression of it rather than to study it carefully,
to ignore, nay, even to despise what it called "the subtle seductions
of colour." Nor was this influence confined to pianoforte-playing
alone. In the days of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven the pianoforte had taken only a small part in the realm of chamber-music;
for all three composers the string quartet was the ideal combination
of instruments. But from the death of Beethoven to the end of
the nineteenth century composers of chamber-music were seldom
happy unless they could combine the strings with the pianoforte.
The string quartet was not congenial to Schumann and Mendelssohn, and although Brahms and Dvorak practised it with more
success, it will probably be admitted by most musicians that their
pianoforte trios, quartets and quintets are more characteristic of
their genius.
We may indeed see the beginnings of this new development
in the later trios of Beethoven. In the trios of Schumann and
Mendelssohn the pianoforte is always the leader of the group:
the principle is pushed to its extreme in the well-known trio of
Tchaikovsky, in conception so touchingly beautiful, so monstrous in
execution. The more natural balance of instruments, according
to the ideas of that day, is obtained by setting four strings, rather
than two or three, to match the pianoforte. But such works as
the pianoforte quintets of Schumann, Brahms and Cesar Franck,
however much their musical ideas may claim our admiration,
inevitably tempted performers into an increasing coarseness and
roughness of performance, which could not fail to make itself
apparent in string quartets as well. It was lucky that Brahms
was able towards the end of his life to find salvation through his
newly awakened interest in the clarinet as a chamber-instrument.
Even more serious damage was done in the department of
vocal music. The very root and foundation of all music was
corrupted, and it may be years before the art recovers from the
injury which it has sustained. For the ruin of singing, Wagner
has generally been held responsible, and if Wagner is to blame,

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Beethoven is partly responsible for leading him astray. But it

must be remembered that Beethoven, and even Wagner, wrote
at a time when real singing was still respected and studied. It is
not every one who can give an adequate performance of the solos
or even of the choral parts of the Ninth Symphony and the Mass
in D, but on the rare occasions when those works are sung, and
really sung, by singers who possess not only the requisite physical
strength but an irreproachable vocal technique as well, we realize
that Beethoven was cruelly exacting to the human voice only
because he knew that the human voice alone could interpret
ideas of such vastness and grandeur.
As regards Wagner, it is a matter of common knowledge that
he insisted on pure singing from his interpreters. One proof of
his appreciation of real singing is the frequent prevalence of sound
over sense in his librettos-Wagalaweia, hojotoho and the rest.
Another is his choice of such singers as Heinrich Vogl-the only
singer I have ever heard who could interpret Mozart's Don Ottavioand Lilli Lehmann, who tells us in her autobiography that Norma
"should be sung and acted with fanatical consecration!" That was
in the old days when Wagner was so strange to musicians that
he needed full-blooded singing to show how vocal his music really
was. But when Wagner's music came to be well-known-thanks
no doubt largely to the pianoforte as a disseminator of musical
culture-singers (if I may charitably call them so) began to realize
the disastrous principle that just as the pianoforte could indicate
the sounds which listeners remembered having heard from the
orchestra, so they, too, might indicate by a pianoforte treatment
of the larynx the sounds which the composer had intended to be
sung. It was a style of barking which has been generally associated
with Wagner's name, because Wagner's operas were the quickest
road to such success as is expressed in terms of lucrative engagements and laudatory press-cuttings: but it was a common disease
in all concert-rooms and spread its infection even to English choral
singing.
I shall be told that it is absurd to attribute this devastation
of the art of singing to the influence of the pianoforte, because
Wagner himself was a very mediocre pianist. And it is curious
to note in this connection that Brahms, who was at one time a
pianist of some repute, was at his very best in writing songs, songs
indeed in which the sense of vocal phrase was so powerful that the
literary values are often completely dominated by it, whereas his
pianoforte writing is in many cases nothing short of barbarous.
The fact is that the general musical characteristics of a given

The Pianoforte and Its Influence on Modern Music 285

period depend not on the output of its isolated men of genius,
but on the general musicianship of the average man both amateur
and professional. Viewing musical history from this standpoint,
the most notable feature of the nineteenth century is the enormous
number of pianofortes, accompanied by a correspondingly vast
publication of pianoforte-arrangements. This obviously signifies
a corresponding multitude of players, most of whom we can
conveniently designate as strummers. It is therefore not surprising
that we have subconsciously arrived at the disastrous condition
of regarding the pianoforte, rather than the voice, as the normal
means of producing music.

III.
Could the complete harpsichord and pianoforte works of
J. S. Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert,
Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms be suddenly obliterated
from our knowledge, we might deplore the loss of much immortal
music, but we should still feel that the position of those composers
(except possibly Schumann) remained unaltered. To treatDomenico
Scarlatti, Liszt and Chopin in the same way would be practically to
obliterate those composers altogether. To them the keyboard was
not just one among many outlets of expression, but almost the only
means by which they could convey their ideas to the minds of
their audience. Such concentration, even in the case of composers
below the first rank, necessarily leads to considerable expansion
of the resources offered by the particular instrument. A composer
who feels that he has the orchestra at his disposal will probably
not want to waste time in trying to obtain from the pianoforte
effects which he can more easily obtain elsewhere: he will be
content for the most part to proceed on traditional lines, making
innovations only when they are the outcome of what is a new
thought, not merely a new effect of sound. We see this, generally
speaking, in the late works of Beethoven. There are, it is true,
certain new colour-effects produced, but they are the result of
and almost always completely overshadowed by the expression
of the musical thought itself, an expression still based on the
classical principle that a note sounded on the pianoforte is fully
equivalent to the same note sung or sounded on another instrument.
With Domenico Scarlatti, Liszt and Chopin the case is
different. If we accept the common comparison of pianoforte
music with black-and-white drawing, we may say that, whereas
the classical school insisted on firm outlines, sometimes even on
the precision of the architect's office, these other composers adopted

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rather the methods of those artists who carefully avoid drawing

a single line accurately but obtain vivid and fascinating effects
of sunlight and texture by free and bold indication of shadows,
leaving the spectator's imagination to complete the picture. They
start definitely from the principle that their notes are not real
sounds, but merely indications of them; they assume in their
hearer's minds a general familiarity with the music of the day,
and stimulate imagination, not by attempting to present essential
forms, but by ingenious complications of subsidiary and accessory
ideas. In this sense Domenico Scarlatti, in spite of his date, in
spite of his clear-cut logic, is to be classed as a romantic, little
though he may appear to have in common with Liszt. They are
romantic in so far as their music is music about music, rather
than music about life; they are classical in that they accept their
instrument frankly for a sham, and never pretend that it is anything else.
To dissect the personality of Liszt would require a whole
volume, and I dare not attempt here more than the roughest
indications. His style is derived in the first instance from that
of Weber. It is curious that Weber, the feeblest and emptiest of
all the romantic composers, should yet have been so outstanding
a personality that not a single romantic composer, not even
Chopin, who is needless to say by far the greatest of them, can
be explained without reference to him. Now Weber, put shortly,
is in the main Rossini arranged for the pianoforte. Almost every
mannerism that we recognize as typical of Weber may be traced
in the airs of Tancredi and Semiramide, where we may note, perhaps
with surprise, the classic dignity of the born Italian, the born
singer. Why, one wonders, do these noble and passionate phrases
sound so flashy and rhetorical under Weber's fingers? It is because
the pianoforte (we must not forget that Weber was a pianoforte
virtuoso) gives them a feverish over-emphasis; the indolent barcarolle becomes a leaping waltz, the stately procession a military
strut. To this foundation Liszt adds the satanic wizardry of
Paganini, the tender sentiment of Schubert (Rossini again, seen
through a different temperament) the still tenderer sentimentality
of Bellini, later on, a touch of Magyar folk-song, more consciously
acquired than innate, in spite of his ancestry, and eventually, the
pious musical phraseology of the age which proclaimed the Immaculate Conception and invented the harmonium to sing its
praises. It was only a pianist who could assimilate so many
influences. They were nearly all second-hand to begin with, and
the only way to present them effectively was to treat them as

The Pianoforte and Its Influence on Modern Music 287

holy relics, vaporous shapes, faint exhalations, dreams not to be
evoked but by the magician's touch.
Here, too, we see another essential feature of romanticismthe visible person of the player. Beethoven stands already near
enough to the romantics to make us feel thankful that his deafness
made it impossible for him to become a travelling virtuoso. He
wrote his thoughts down that others might interpret them. Liszt
comes before the public himself to perform the act of creation.
So much exaggeration has been practised in writing about
Liszt, whether by his admirers or his detractors, that it is difficult
to analyse him dispassionately. Indeed to analyse dispassionately
so passionate a personality seems almost blasphemous to either
side. I confess that I find him far too fascinating as a subject
for dissection for me to consider his music from an ethical standpoint. And it is most important that modern musicians and
modern critics should study Liszt in this way, not merely because
he is the foundation of modern pianoforte-playing and pianoforte
composition, but also because his very shortcomings as a composer of real music make it comparatively easy for us to observe
the technical principles underlying his method.' If he arouses no
emotions in us, so much the better; we must study him as we
study strict counterpoint, free from secondary distractions.
The first thing to note is the new conception of the pianoforte
as a solo instrument in the grand manner. This is not due to
Liszt alone, it is true, but Liszt is the most noteworthy representative of the public virtuoso type. The classical sonatas, from
C. P. E. Bach onwards, had been written for domestic consumption;
even the concertos, like the symphonies of that day, were more
what we should class as chamber-music-indeed a concerto of
C. P. E. Bach is a much quieter style of composition than the
pianoforte quintets of Brahms or Cesar Franck. Further, we
must remember that the pianoforte had always been for obvious
reasons the instrument of extemporization, an art which in classical
times was constantly practised in public. Those who could not
extemporize themselves could buy extemporizations ready-made
by all the composers of the day-preludes, toccatas, fantasias,
impromptus, to say nothing of fugues, for the fugue is above all
others the ideal extemporary form-at any rate for those who
have the requisite genius.
Secondly, let us consider the resources of the instrument
itself. It is not necessary here to go into the history of successive
1I refer not to the technique of pianoforte-playing but to the technique of composition for the pianoforte.

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advantages in manufacture. The modern instrument, in spite of

improvements in resonance, in action, in quality of tone, remains
in fundamental principle the same as it was in Liszt's early days.
A string is set in vibration by a hammer-an initial impact of
a certain violence, followed by a gradual diminution of the sound.
The violence of the initial impact can be adjusted exactly by
the action of the finger on the key, and the range from soft to
loud is, especially on a modern instrument, extremely wide.
Whether it is possible, however, to alter the quality as apart from
the intensity of any given note is a much-debated question.
Pianists will probably say that there can be no doubt about it
for a moment-have not the teachers catalogued and classified as
many varieties of touch as there were smells in the streets of
Cologne? Men of science, on the other hand, while admitting
that the problem presents difficulties of great mathematical
complexity, tend to think that the quality of a note cannot
possibly be altered by any variety of touch.1
"Good touch," says Professor W. B. Norton2 of Belfast,
"consists in the power to produce fine gradations of intensity
and in complete mastery of legato and the use of the pedal."
Mr. Spencer Pickering, F. R. S.,3 similarly maintains that the
apparent difference of quality is due to varying intensity and
length of one note as compared with other notes struck simultaneously or not, in the course of a piece of music. A further
difference is due to pedalling.
It is in fact the right-hand pedal which gives the pianoforte
an advantage possessed by no other instrument to any appreciable
extent. A pianoforte without the pedal would be almost as
limited in its effects as a violin without a bow. For the principal
value of the pedal is not merely to sustain sounds when the finger
for some reason is obliged to release the key, but to reinforce
sounds by allowing other strings to vibrate in sympathy with
them. To what extent and in what precise ways these sympathetic
vibrations affect the "colour" of the pianoforte is a matter for
acousticians to investigate: but it is hardly necessary to point
out that even if the ear is a very unsafe guide in attempting to
estimate qualities of sounds, it is none the less obvious that a
rearrangement of the overtones by sympathetic reinforcement
must necessarily have some considerable effect on the quality
which these overtones produce.
1See a very interesting correspondence on the subject of "Pianoforte Touch,"
in Nature, May, June and July, 1913.
sIbid., 31 July, 1913.
2Nature, 10 July, 1913.

The Pianoforte and Its Influence on Modern Music 289

Professor G. H. Bryan, F. R. S.,1 who is inclined to believe
that difference of quality is obtainable by difference of touch,
concludes his arguments with the very pointed remark that "the
average pianoforte pupil has too much to do with learning execution to trouble about 'touch,' and very few professionalsproduce
variations in the quality of their notes at all approaching the
possible maximum."
The enormousimportanceof "touch" in pianoforte-playingis
in fact only just beginning to be realized. There are, it is true,
plenty of amateurs whose touch is agreeable enough to make up
for other technical deficiencies;there are a fair number of professional pianists whose touch seldom offends. But there are very
few indeed who possess a complete mastery over a really wide
range of tone-quality, and make full use of this mastery as a
means of intellectual interpretation. I venture to doubt whether
Liszt himself realized its possibilities as they are realized by such
a player as Ferruccio Busoni; Chopin, on the other hand, while
confining himself to a much smaller field of pure technique, must
have had an unparalleledsensitiveness to the values of delicate
gradations.
ProfessorBryan initiated the correspondencein Nature, from
which I have quoted, in connexion with experiments on the
pianola.2 The pianola supplies one interesting test for the way
in which differentcomposerstreat the pianoforte. A later correspondentfound that, whereasthe pianola could renderBeethoven's
sonatas "acceptably,"it failed completely with the nocturnes and
ballades of Chopin. To this I would add that Lizst is of all
composers the one who is most effective on the pianola, and I
venture to think that most people would be in fairly general
agreement with these views. Now it is obviously absurd to
suggest that Beethoven and Liszt are both greater composers
than Chopin, and equally absurd to suggest the opposite. The
pianola test has in fact nothing to do with the musical merits
of the three, but applies solely to their methods of handling
the pianoforte. The explanationis that, in the case of Beethoven,
as I have suggested earlier, the musical thought is so completely
independent of the means of presentation that it will dominate
even a mediocre execution. With Liszt the handling of the
instrument is so masterly that, even when delicacies of touch
are ignored, the mere lay-out of the notes supplies an extra1Nature, 8 May, 1913.
21 hope I may be permitted to use the word pianola to cover all mechanical
pianoforte-players of the type.

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ordinary variety of picturesque colour effects. Both Beethoven

and Liszt in fact depend generally speaking on evenness and
equality of touch, Beethoven because he accepts the pianoforte
tone as the equivalent of the tone of other instruments, Liszt
because the extreme simplicity of his musical idea allows him to
design his colour effects in large patches, covering a whole phrase
or more.
The inequalities of human performance may sometimes produce a pleasing play of light and shade on the regular texture of
these broad surfaces, but there are indeed many cases where a
perfect homogeneity of tone quality, such as is exceedingly difficult
of achievement by a pianist, is positively demanded; e. g., in the
quasi-geometrical patterns of the Variations on Weinen, Klagen.
On the other hand, the ballades and nocturnes of Chopin, depending
as they often do on an etherealized recollection of Bellini's arias,
demand a more subtle delicacy of colour-gradation.
"Complete
command of all varieties of colour," says Sir Charles Stanford1
with his invariable penetrating insight, "is the almost exclusive
possession of the human voice." Liszt could seldom do more than
transcribe Bellini; Chopin's genius interprets him. If we have ever
heard the operas sung, Liszt can recall the singer to our imagination;
Chopin goes further, makes us almost feel that not even Malibran
herself could have suffused those tender melodies with an inspiration so enchanting.
Transcriptions were the principal works of Liszt's first period,
and he remained a transcriber all his life. For if, as Busoni
says, "notation is in itself the transcription of an abstract idea"
and "again, the performance of a work is also a transcription,"
then surely pianoforte-music, more than any other kind of music,
is transcription in its very essence. The Virginalists, Domenico
Scarlatti, C. P. E. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven himself, were, as we
have just seen, all of them transcribers when they sat down to
their keyboards, and if Liszt has had to bear most of the bad
reputation attaching to transcriptions, it is because he happened
to be the prince of transcribers and a poor composer of original
music. For even what he thought was original was in a sense
transcription-either a transcription of non-musical ideas, or a
transcription of musical ideas that already connoted certain definite
associations-the typical romantic method-or of ideas which he
may have thought were his own, but which were only his ideas
about Schubert, Weber or Schumann. It makes no difference
1Musical Composition, London, 1911.

The Pianoforte and Its Influence on Modern Music 291

whether he writes for the pianoforte or for the orchestra. Indeed
his symphonic poems are pianoforte music even more than Schumann's symphonies are, for they are better planned for the
pianoforte. Their orchestration is effective enough, but they
almost always proclaim their pianoforte origin: the single bass
note at the beginning of a bar, the other parts coming in after
a quaver's rest, the long sustained chords pianissimo that vainly
try to reproduce the effect of the pedal, the overwhelming predominance given to the harp-these are sufficient indications.
The musician who hates transcriptions has often good enough
grounds for his hatred. A transcription is a commentary, just
as much as an analytical programme; and he may reasonably say
that it is an insult to his intelligence and his imagination. But
commentaries are not all of them foolish, and if our serious musician
is willing to listen to a lecture on Bach delivered in the ordinary
way, why should he be indignant over a lecture on Bach that is
played in Bach's own language-the normal language in fact of
all musicians-music itself? Our serious musician may perhaps
reply that he resents some comparatively simple and straightforward piece of old music being made to sound enormously
elaborate and insuperably difficult to play. To this I would say
that if a transcription sounds difficult it is either badly written
or badly played. A really great artist makes the most complicated
music sound clear, easy and natural-herein lies one of the best
tests of good playing.l

IV.
It is mainly from Liszt that the modern school of advanced
pianoforte-music is descended. But the interrelation of modern
pianoforte-writing with modern orchestration and modern harmony presents a complicated problem compared with which the
unravelling of Liszt's own personality is simplicity itself. The
pianoforte remains always the instrument of associations, and
associations, like parasites, increase and multiply in all arts as
time goes on, their birthrate being very considerably encouraged
by modern facilities for popular dissemination.
The discords of modern harmony arise out of two main
causes, first, the ruthless contrapuntal independence of partwriting, and secondly the acceptance of chords, dissonant and
consonant alike, as effects of timbre. A mixture-stop in an organ
'If my serious musician goes on to say that transcriptions of Bach's organ works
only sound like a pianoforte duet in which the two performers cannot keep together,
then I cordially agree with him.

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sounds the common chord of every single note on the keyboard;
but its general effect is one of timbre alone, without any conscious
reference to harmony. We know that any single note may be
split up into its component harmonics, and that timbre depends
on the relative intensities of these; then why should we not
construct new timbres synthetically, by sounding several notes
together? If the organist may harmonize a melody in consecutive
major thirds, fifths and octaves, why should not the pianist, or
any one else, harmonize it in consecutive seconds, fourths, or
sevenths? It amounts to no more than pulling out a different
stop. The pianoforte is obviously the most practical instrument
on which to try experiments of this kind, and so about 1887 there
rises on the world of music that delightfully quaint and entertaining composer Erik Satie, followed by Debussy, Ravel, Leo
Ornstein and others. And if even Gounod experimented with the
device of "playing on the cracks"-i. e., striking seconds-in his
charming little Dodelinette, why should we be taken aback when
Busoni in his Sonatina seconda writes rapid scales in consecutive
seconds? And who shall say that the pianoforte is not a laboursaving device when the same Sonatina opens with an effect for
which Berlioz would have required two men at least, one to hold
the cymbal by its strap and the other to beat on it with the
baguettesd' ponge?
Modern composers are in fact realizing more fully than ever
that the pianoforte, being a percussion instrument, is the best
possible medium for which to transcribe the effects of other
instruments of percussion. A clerical Second Empire produced
Lefebure-Wely's Les Cloches du Monastere, and perhaps a future
historian may connect up the unending tintinnabulations of the
modern French and English school with the revival of plain-song
and other mediaevalisms. But these bells are not all church bells,
nor are they the only noises that have passed into music. Alkan
gave us a clever pianoforte picture of an express train-just such
an absurd train as Erckmann-Chatrian described in the story of the
blacksmith-and Vaughan Williams in the "London Symphony"
has suggested the jingling carthorses on their way to Covent
Garden and the skidding of motor-omnibuses in Piccadilly.
Debussy's amusing Minstrels are a step nearer primaeval barbarism
than Alkan's Le tambour bat aux champs. The noisier our street
life becomes, the more insistent is the need for musical sounds
that can penetrate it, and it is exactly the instruments of percussion
-bells, "sick giants" (I don't know what their trade name is, nor
how they make the noise, but the effect is certainly percussive)

The Pianoforte and Its Influence on Modern Music 293

and street pianofortes-which force themselves most irresistibly
on the unwilling ear. And so it is in the percussion department
that the modern orchestra is most characteristic. It cannot make
very much difference to an audience whether a composer uses a
third hautboy or a cor anglais, a tuba or a bass trombone; but the
harp, the xylophone, the glockenspiel, the celesta and the timplipito
arrest attention at once. Moreover the attentive concert-goer
will notice even in the treatment of wind and strings an increasing love of short sharp attacks rather than sustained tones.
Bellini was accused of treating the orchestra as an overgrown
guitar: is it not the tendency of modern composers to turn the
orchestra into a monstrous pianoforte?
I do not in the least wish to quarrel with the tendencies of
modern pianoforte music, considered as a thing by itself. On the
contrary, it is certainly the modern composers who have best
understood the instrument. To criticize their works as music
would be beyond the scope of this paper. But it is clear that the
modern treatment of the instrument demands generally, and may
very likely demand more and more urgently, a standard of technique
very far beyond the abilities of the average amateur. This is in
some ways a positive advantage, because if the immense possibilities of the pianoforte are only to be exploited by those specialists
who dedicate their lives to it, we may perhaps find amateurs
giving up the pianoforte in despair and preferring to devote their
attention to other means of making music. What the effect of the
pianola on musical intelligence will be it is difficult to forecast.
Under the hands and feet of a skilled operator it can produce an
astonishingly successful imitation of a good player; but accomplished pianolists are almost as rare as accomplished pianists, and
the average energetic and unintelligent manipulator is probably
contributing disastrously towards the deadening of our nerves to
the appreciation of finely graded tone. Moreover, the pianola
suffers at present from the serious drawback that its mechanism
for controlling the pedal necessarily hampers to some extent the
use of precisely that device which as I have said before is the
most essential advantage of the pianoforte, a device which in
modern music demands an ever increasing skill and subtlety in
the method of its employment. The pianola then, valuable as it
may be for the popularization of all kinds of music, is more likely
to intensify the evil effects of the pianoforte than to direct our
taste towards the understanding of its true individuality.
The problem of the pianola and its influence may indeed well
be one of the gravest importance in musical education and

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appreciation. For as it is, the pianoforte already completely dominates practically the whole of modern music in one way or another.
The tempered scale and its offshoot the whole-tone scale, so
fiercely denounced by a certain school of teachers, are, I think,
among the least of the evils which it has imposed upon us. Far
worse is its tyranny of stress accent, leading inevitably to vulgarization of rhythm, to the acceptance of false values in quality
of sound, to an indifference towards sustained melodic writingand therefore a fortiori towards contrapuntal writing, since
counterpoint consists in the combination of melodies-and, as
a general result of all these things, to a dangerous atrophy of our
power of thinking in music.
To overthrow this tyranny is impossible. We cannot send
out emissaries into all parts of the earth to destroy every single
pianoforte that exists. Even if we could, the musical antiquaries
would be reconstructing them, not for general use of course, but
for purposes of scientific investigation-"we must hear what this
old music really sounded like on the original instruments for
which it was intended!" There is only one remedy: we must
give audiences something better. The unsophisticated are quite
ready to accept it. It is ready to hand-it has always been so
and always will be. It needed no invention: it was created for
us. It is music itself, the first and only instrument. Will no one
revive the lost art of singing?